1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a tobacco rack for holding tobacco leaves during curing. During the curing of tobacco, the green tobacco leaves are allowed to hang suspended from racks in tobacco curing barns. The tobacco leaves are said to be cured when they have remained in the curing barns for a sufficient period to reach the desired crispness. At this time the tobacco is removed from the barn and the racks, graded, packed, and shipped to the tobacco market.
All of these operations are hand operations involving great numbers of man-hours. To reduce the requirement that each leaf be impaled, by hand, on a stick or string, new devices, such as the instant device, have been utilized. These racks permit a large quantity of individual tobacco leaves to be racked at one time in one simple operation whereby the tobacco leaves are simultaneously impaled by simply joining the two elements of the new tobacco curing racks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For decades, the Bright Leaf tobacco leaves were cured by stringing or "lopping" the tobacco leaves on tobacco strings or sticks and suspending these strings or sticks on uniformly spaced horizontal "tier poles". These tier poles were anchored to the interior of the curing barn at various levels from the ground floor to the rafters.
Subsequently, various other forms of tobacco racks were developed, such as the racks shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,134,583; U.S. Pat. No. 3,244,445; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,248. The prior art racks are bulky, heavy and expensive. They require electric hoists to remove them from the field trailer and place them in the tiers in the curing barns. This requires extra labor.